


Sandbox

by admiralty



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Feelings Realization, Pining, Post-Episode: s05e07 Emily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:28:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23829883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/admiralty/pseuds/admiralty
Summary: He doesn’t know what to say. It feels like she’s trying to talk, really talk. But they don’t do this. He has no map.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 24
Kudos: 148
Collections: X-Files Angst Fanfic Exchange (2020)





	Sandbox

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fragilevixen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fragilevixen/gifts).



> Prompt: Mulder prods at Scully in the aftermath of her cancer going into remission, pushing her to a breaking point -- revealing a fear of death, loss of faith, and dying "alone". Her revelation leads to Mulder's own realization that he's in love with her.
> 
> Jeri: I’m so happy I got this prompt, because I also believe this is when Mulder knew he was in love with Scully. Hope you enjoy it! 

  
  
  
  
  


It’s been months since he’s thought about this: Scully as a mother. When she’d first brought it up back in Home, Pennsylvania, it had thrown him. Not because he couldn’t see it, but because he’d never really tried. 

Now, over the course of a few days, she’s somehow become a mother and lost her child.

Together, he and Scully lay her daughter to rest, or at least what’s left of her. From a little box of sand to the San Diego coastline. He’s grateful she allows him to participate, to bear witness to the closing of yet another X-File that has the name “Scully” attached to it.

She doesn’t ask him to stay. Margaret Scully, with Tara’s help, sets him up on the couch in the den, and he dares not refuse. 

He endures Scully’s distance and Bill’s glares for forty eight hours. He shouldn’t be here at all, he has work to do at home. But he cannot bring himself to go, he will not leave her; not until he knows she’s going to be okay.

Tara hands him a pillow, bids him goodnight. Scully has been keeping to herself in the stand-in version of her old bedroom, which Mulder couldn’t help but notice is filled with baby paraphernalia. A crib, a mobile, a changing table. Everything except the baby, currently settled into Bill and Tara’s room.

He wishes he could sleep in there instead to spare her the additional sting but it isn’t his place to decide. None of this is his domain. So he makes himself comfortable on the uncomfortable couch, something he’s very used to doing, and sleeps here another night.

  
  


_***_

  
  


_He watches her sleeping, notes the color returning to her previous deathlike pallor. Her body has been fighting the cancer for months now, but never had it fought so hard as it has the past night. She looks absolutely exhausted._

_The science and mechanics of the tiny chip handed to him by the devil are meaningless, unimportant to him right now. What matters is the beating of her heart, the rise and fall of her chest, the gentle beep of the machinery that tells him alive, alive, alive._

_Her mother will credit God, Scully will credit science. He isn’t quite sure what Bill Jr. will make of it all._

_Mulder, however, knows the truth: that he is the one who has saved her life. Somehow, deep down, he knows that her faith in him and him alone is what has kept her heart beating, and that knowledge is staggering._

If I can save you, let me.

_Her selflessness still floors him whenever he thinks of it. He wouldn’t let her take the fall for him for a mountain of reasons, but she’s allowed him to save her with this, a final shot at the buzzer. The swish has never sounded so sweet._

_He takes her hand, which was clammy yesterday, reveling in its warmth. She stirs gently and he doesn’t want to wake her, he only wants her to rest, only wants her to be at peace, so he brings it to his lips and kisses her fingers with emotion he’s thus far been unable to demonstrate._

_She will never know._

  
  


_***_

  
  


He wakes in an unfamiliar house, with unfamiliar sounds coming from the kitchen. Nothing particularly special or out of the ordinary: just the sounds of family. That is unusual enough for Fox Mulder.

He pulls on a sweatshirt, uses the bathroom. Making sure he’s at least somewhat presentable for Scully’s family, he wanders out in search of coffee. 

Mrs. Scully sits at the kitchen table with a mug of her own, hands clasped around it, eyes closed. Just a few weeks ago she was thanking God for a miracle. What is she thanking him for today, he wonders?

Bill Jr., on the other hand, watches Mulder as he crosses to the coffee machine, socked feet on tile, too comfortable, probably, at least to Bill. Scully’s older brother’s eyes never leave him, looking up from his newspaper like twin laser beams, as if trying to figure out this strange man his sister has gotten herself so wrapped up in. 

As if trying to vaporize him on the spot.

“Morning,” Mulder says in what he hopes is a friendly tone. He picks up a mug, pours his coffee. He usually drinks it black but he can feel Bill’s glare on his back, and in an effort to delay facing the man for even a few more moments, adds creamer. Then sugar. He drinks it; it’s far too sweet. 

“Sleep well, Mr. Mulder?” Bill says with an edge in his voice.

“Yes, thank you,” Mulder says, turning. He leans against the counter and sips. Tara gives him a smile from the couch, lifting her fresh newborn from a nearby bassinet. It pains Mulder to see this after what Scully has gone through over the past few days and while he can hardly blame the Scullys for reproducing he can feel his heart physically aching for her.

“Time for a feeding,” Tara says. 

Mulder watches her as she makes herself scarce, then looks at Bill. “Scully been down yet?”

Bill shrugs. “No idea.” He doesn’t waste any time. “How long do you plan on staying here, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Mulder shakes his head, any desire to go toe-to-toe with this guy staying as contained as he feels inside this house. “Until Scully asks me to go,” he answers. “I just want to be here for my friend while she needs me.” 

“Your ‘friend,’ huh?” Bill sneers, his emphasis not unnoticed. 

“Yes, my friend.” Mulder looks at him, trying to discern his meaning. 

“Hmmph,” Bill grunts. His stare is angry, overbearing. “The way I see it, you’ve been working Dana to death. Almost literally. Doesn’t sound like you’ve been much of a friend to her.”

He looks at Bill, can see the anger in his eyes. Surely Bill is referring to her refusal to give up while she was sick, her refusal to just allow the tragedy to win, the cancer to beat her. 

Fox Mulder understands the whole “big brother” thing. Bill’s protective streak is a familiar one to him, one that brings back painful memories. Not because he was so fiercely protective of his own little sister, but because he couldn’t be. Watching Samantha get torn away from him was difficult enough; knowing he was the only one in a position to help her and failing to do so has been unbearable. The tiny kernel of guilt he’s harbored since he was twelve years old has grown and grown until it sits just beneath his lungs, lodged there, making it difficult to breathe sometimes.

He wonders when his guilt about Scully will cause him to stop breathing altogether.

Mulder chooses his words carefully. “She chose to keep working while she was sick,” he says, trying and failing to match the edge in her brother’s voice. “That was her decision, not mine.”

“I find that hard to believe,” he counters. “Ever since she started working with you it’s been non-stop.”

There is more to Dana Scully than Mulder has ever allowed himself to uncover: much, much more. He wonders if this is some kind of subconscious self-protecting strategy; that denying himself the deepest, darkest parts of her is the only way he will ever come out of this alive.

What “this” is, he’s still not certain. All he knows is that every day that’s passed since death gave her a reprieve becomes more and more difficult. Perhaps it’s because life feels more precious to him now; almost as if he himself had died. 

_I’m only half dead,_ he’d uttered upon finding her dying in ICU. It wasn’t far from the truth. 

He takes a sip of his coffee. “What exactly has she told you about me?” 

“Not much, actually,” Bill says, to Mulder’s surprise. “Which only means you must be more important to her than she wants us to think.” 

Mulder studies him, really tries hard to figure out this man standing across from him. Scully hasn’t even mentioned her brother, her family really, more than a handful of times over the years.

Obviously they’re more important to her than she wants him to think. 

“I do know it seems like she’d do just about anything to please you,” Bill continues, before Mulder can reply. “Even at her own expense.”

It’s difficult to hear this from a member of Scully’s family. Mulder hasn’t spared them much of a thought over the years, and maybe he should have. Sometimes it really feels as if they are all the other has, but when he is confronted with this reality, these people who care for her just as much as he does, he knows that isn’t the case.

He suddenly feels defensive, protective of Scully, of their partnership, in the face of these accusations. “She doesn’t do this for me,” he says, and even as the words tumble off his lips he wonders whether or not they’re true. “She’s great at her job and she loves it.” 

_Even the bad parts,_ he thinks, but does not say. 

_Even the parts that give her cancer._

_Even the parts that kill her family members._

“If you say so,” Bill replies almost smugly. For the first time Mulder wonders if this is more of a pride thing than anything else.

“Look, I know you don’t like me very much,” Mulder says, aware that debating any of this with Bill is pointless. “And I don’t blame you. Always meeting under these grim circumstances, knowing what she’s given up for our work...” he trails off, for the first time truly comprehending the frustration of being on the outside of the inside he and Scully have inhabited all these years. 

Bill looks at him expectantly, a _go ahead, give me what you’ve got_ expression painted across his features. Mulder pauses, collecting his thoughts. “But she’s important to me,” he says, looking her brother right in the eye. “More than you know.”

“Important enough to set the work aside for once and just be there for her?” he says, and while he isn’t wrong, what could Mulder possibly say to this man that would make him believe that’s exactly what he’s been trying to do? None of it would make an ounce of sense. Should he tell him he’d spent the couple of days before her cancer remission trying desperately to find a secret alien cure? That he’d considered joining forces with his worst enemy to save her life? That just last week, he’d assaulted a pharmaceutical doctor in an effort to protect the little girl Scully loved?

All of his effort would be wasted on Bill Jr. in any case, wherever the truth lay. No one could possibly understand his sacrifice but the woman he’d sacrificed everything for.

Life is indeed precious, and although she’s chosen to continue spending her precious time with him, he continues to feel less and less worthy of it. He doesn’t know what to say so he looks down into his coffee miserably. Defeat seems to be the name of the game whenever he’s in a room with Scully’s older brother.

“I’ve been watching you two together,” Bill continues. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed the way you look at her.”

A very specific discomfort rises inside Mulder, one that comes and goes from time to time. Sometimes it’s caused by a whiff of Scully’s hair, or the way her lips look when his name rolls off her tongue. Sometimes it happens when she’ll indulge one of his paranormal theories and her eyebrow will lilt like a familiar song. And even occasionally he’ll be watching one of his favorite videos and a busty blonde woman suddenly has red hair and moans “ _Mulderrrr…_ ” in a way he’s ashamed to be imagining.

He bites his lip, because he can’t help it. “It isn’t like that,” Mulder replies automatically, too quickly, his mouth full of his own traitorous tongue. 

He wonders just as quickly if, in fact, it’s exactly like that.

He thinks of Melissa, the Scully sibling this quest had taken away from her. The last sibling to confront him on this very topic. He wasn’t ready to hear it then, either. 

He loves Scully in a way he’s never loved another. It’s a special kind of love, its own kind of love. 

He tries daily to convince himself it’s not _that_ kind of love.

Now he takes pause. What exactly is it, then? It isn’t as if he’s had time for a romantic relationship, but even setting that aside, the past few years have been a strange kind of lonely. He hasn’t been intimate with anyone in what… five years? Except that one time while Scully was gone, _and only while she was gone._

Losing Samantha was one thing; he’d been innocent, he knows it wasn’t he who caused it. But nearly losing Scully (twice) because of his voluntary involvement in all of this; because she herself had been inextricably tangled within his own endless web of conspiracy? And now the events of the past few days on top of it all? That brings guilt he might never be able to surmount. 

He hasn’t spoken in too long, and his face must betray his musings. Bill notices.

“It isn’t like that, huh? Suit yourself, Mr. Mulder,” he shrugs. “I’m a little relieved, to be honest.” He pins Mulder with a glare. “I may not know Dana as well as I’d like to, but I do know she deserves better than you.”

“Bill,” Margaret Scully warns. Mulder had almost forgotten she was in the room. 

_You’re one sorry sonofabitch,_ Bill had already called him. _Not a whole lot more to say._

Apparently, there was.

“I said what I wanted to say,” Bill says, looking at his mother, then back to Mulder. “If you spare my sister this and this alone, I can live with that.”

 _Spare her,_ Mulder thinks. _Spare her from myself._ There is no room for further interpretation.

Bill gives Mulder one last loaded look, then leaves the room. It doesn’t really matter how he feels about Scully, he’s slowly realizing. This will never, ever be that simple.

Mulder doesn’t look at her mother but can feel her gaze just the same. Probably judging, probably resenting. Her daughter was nearly taken away from her for the second time in about as many years. Scully just buried a child that wouldn’t have existed had it not been for her involvement with him. He doesn’t blame her mother for hating him either. How could he?

“Fox,” she offers gently. He looks over at her. The angry, disapproving eyes he expects are instead surprisingly soft and warm. “You mustn’t let Bill get under your skin,” she says.

“Maybe I should,” he shrugs, giving her a small, lopsided grin. “Maybe I deserve it.”

“I think he’s a bit jealous of the closeness you two share,” she reveals. “He was close with Melissa, but somehow he’s never quite had that relationship with Dana. She doesn’t let any of us in about a lot of things, but Bill takes it very personally. And I’m sorry to say his protectiveness tends to show itself in the worst kinds of ways.”

Mulder doesn’t tell Mrs. Scully that they aren’t actually as close as he’d like them to be, but nods slowly. “I think I get it,” he tells her. “I had a little sister too, once.”

She smiles sadly. He smiles back. She looks down into her coffee mug for a moment and then speaks into it, as if she were unloading a secret. "I can't quite seem to... know my daughter's mind as well as I'd like to," she says a bit haltingly. "But I feel her heart, right here, right next to mine." She holds a hand to her chest. "She cares about you, Fox. And I can see you care for her. That's all I need to know."

Her revelation is unexpected, but oddly welcome. It warms his insides to know at least one member of Scully's family doesn't want to kill him.

He nods at her gratefully. “I’m going to go look for her,” he says. He’s always liked Scully’s mother. He doesn’t have a whole lot of happy ‘mom’ memories to hold onto.

Mrs. Scully gives him a cryptic smile, one he might attempt to figure out if he weren’t so distracted. “You go do that,” she says. “I’m sure she wants you to find her.”

  
  
***

  
  


Mulder’s efforts to find Scully that morning go unrewarded. Bill’s vehicle is missing, and he knows she must have taken it somewhere. He wonders where. Perhaps the beach, where they’d scattered the bags of sand that were all that remained of Emily. He pictures her walking slowly along the seashore, bare feet in the sand, the Pacific crashing against her feet. 

Alone. 

Around four ‘o clock, the Scullys have a visitor. 

“Detective Kresge,” Mulder greets the younger man with a firm handshake. It isn’t meant to be a competition but it still feels that way. 

Kresge’s eyes are a bit puffy but he looks almost entirely recovered from his encounter with the alien bounty hunter. He’s handsome, has a light demeanor. Very west coast. It had crossed Mulder’s mind when he’d briefly visited him in the hospital: _good for Scully. What she deserves._

“Come on in,” Bill greets the detective, ushering him inside like an old friend. Scully’s brother has met him one time. _Once._

Mulder can hardly blame Bill for preferring this guy. Detective Kresge probably lives in a beachfront condo. Detective Kresge has a pension, probably a dog. 

Detective Kresge hasn’t put her in a position to have to bury her children.

Mrs. Scully is polite, offers the detective lemonade. Tara pulls out his chair. Bill claps him on the back. They all know why he’s here, and Scully’s mother eyes Mulder curiously, as if he were a loaded gun ready to go off. 

Mulder is so uncomfortable he wants to scream; the pressure of a circumstance where his presence is neither understood nor acknowledged simply too much at the moment. And he can’t even be angry; he himself cannot understand or acknowledge the reason he is here.

He exhales loudly, restless and impatient (for what?) and then gets up to go outside. He can’t breathe in this house, not without Scully standing right beside him.

He slams the front door and turns onto the sidewalk, not sure where he’s going, but he walks, and walks, and walks. It’s been warmer on the west coast than he’s used to at home this time of year, but there are gray clouds above him, looking appropriately ominous.

The Scullys live on an army base and the houses are situated side by side, cookie-cutter style. Each one taunts him as he passes, a life he’s robbed Scully of ever having. Eventually he arrives at a deserted playground at the end of the street. 

He isn’t looking for her, not really, but he stumbles upon her all the same. Kind of like how they met in the first place.

“Hey,” he offers gently. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

She sits on a swing, staring off into space. When her father died, all she wanted to do was work. But not this time. This time, she hasn’t so much as mentioned work. There is no manual for grieving a child.

“Hi,” she says in response. “Is my family driving you crazy?”

He shrugs, shoves his hands into his pockets. “No. Your family is great.” He doesn’t tell her Bill hates him. She doesn’t need that unnecessary drama right now.

“Thank you for being here,” she says. “I know you’d probably rather be anywhere else.”

“It’s no problem,” he says. “And I wouldn’t, you know. Want to be anywhere else.” He takes the swing next to her and tries to catch her eye, but Scully only looks at the ground. She is still, except for her bare feet, making lazy circles below them in the sand.

“You okay, Scully?” It’s a stupid question. Of course she isn’t.

She takes a deep breath. “I have an appointment to see my therapist back in DC on Tuesday.”

Mulder nods, unaware Scully was even seeing a therapist. “I hope it helps.”

“It usually does.” Her hand goes to her necklace, the only shred of faith that had remained after Emily’s body disappeared. “You know, I’ve never thought of myself as a nihilist, but right now it truly feels like nothing at all matters,” she says.

She fingers the tiny golden cross. He’s reminded of how he found it in the trunk of Duane Barry’s car all those years ago; how he’d worn it, and it had given him hope that he would find her again. He’s devastated to see her like this, to hear her like this. Until this moment he truly believed nothing could ever break her spirit.

“Death is a natural state of life, I suppose,” she continues. “I’ve always been afraid of it, afraid of dying.” She shakes her head. “I’m a scientist, it doesn’t make any sense.”

He’s quiet. He doesn’t know what to say. It feels like she’s trying to talk, really talk. But they don’t do this. He has no map. 

He’s reminded of what she said to him in the woods on their Florida detour. _Have you ever thought seriously about dying?_ Her words had affected him far more than he’d let on. 

_Once, at the Ice Capades_ was the easy answer. _I nearly shot myself a couple of weeks ago,_ that would have been the real answer.

“When I was a child, I found a baby rabbit in our backyard,” she says out of nowhere. “Bill saw how I doted on it. He teased me. I don’t think he ever intended to hurt it, but... I was afraid he might.” She looks up at Mulder. “I’m sure you know how big brothers can be.”

Mulder grins tightly. He knows.

“I took the rabbit into our basement,” she continues. “I put it in my lunchbox, gave it something to eat. I closed the lid, left it there.” She looks pointedly at Mulder. “I thought I was protecting it.”

A cold chill envelops his heart, the sting of guilt.

_I thought I was protecting you._

“It died, right there in the box,” she says. “Alone.”

He feels it now, acutely, a phantom weight in his pocket: the vial of Scully’s frozen ova. The green tinted maybe-cure for her maybe-daughter. 

He never wanted her to find out he’s known all along her ova were being tampered with by diabolical forces. That, quite possibly, she could have hundreds of other children out there, scattered to the winds, none of them protected. He never wanted her to bear the cruel irony of being a mother with no children.

He only wanted to protect her.

Mulder takes a deep breath, readying another apology. 

“I did the same thing for her,” Scully continues. “I protected her. No one will ever hurt her again.” She nods to herself. “It was the right decision.” 

“Scully, I--”

“I know you only did it because you care, Mulder,” she says, stopping him. “I’m not angry. Well, not anymore. It’s just…” her eyes drift away, to the sky. “Whenever I think of her, I see that rabbit all over again.” 

She stretches a leg out in front of her, making an ‘S’ shape in the sand. He starts to realize why she came here, of all places; wonders if the sand will always make her think of Emily. 

“She didn’t die alone, Scully,” he says gently. “You were with her the whole time.”

“I know that,” she nods again. "I know she didn't die alone." He can see tears in her eyes, finally. He never wants to see them and desperately wants to at the same time. “But I’m terrified that I might.”

Being alone has been Mulder’s natural state for so long, dying as such feels like an inevitability. He tries hard not to think about it too much. But it’s the first time he’s realizing Scully fears it. Even here, in this place, surrounded by family that loves her, she still fears it. 

Even with him by her side, every day.

Hasn’t she been counting on him to be there for her? The same way he has been counting on her for years? And has he failed her, just like her brother had accused him of doing?

In Florida, she’d told him about her anger that she was dying, how senseless and meaningless it had seemed, and that it had occurred to her in those final moments that that was the real struggle – to give her life meaning. 

Mulder wonders: had Scully come to the realization that the meaning in her life was derived from him? And if so, what does his own life mean, now? What does it really mean?

He’s reminded of how cold he’d been in those woods, and how warm she’d made him feel. How whatever hesitation she’d felt prior to her second chance at life had disappeared, and she’d seemed to open up to him more, let him in. 

How, even for one night, it had felt like the two of them were the only people on earth.

_Maybe if it rains sleeping bags, you’ll get lucky._

At first he’d thought he probably misheard her. Scully doesn’t flirt back. She tolerates his playful lobs with the grace he’s come to expect, but never does she actually volley with him. It had surprised him at the time, but everything seems clearer now in hindsight.

_I must remind you this goes against the Bureau’s policy of male and female agents consorting in the same motel room while on assignment._

She’d been trying to interact with him on a different level; a new level. She’d been trying to get personal and rather than taking her up on her offer, rather than simply being there for her, he’d chosen the work. Always the work.

They’re so wrapped up in each other as a matter of course that it feels superfluous to try to separate the professional from the personal with Scully. Maybe that’s why he rarely tries. 

But maybe he should start trying.

“I’m always going to be here for you, Scully,” he says. He hopes it’s true. He hopes she will let it be true. “You are not alone.”

The swings are still, and they are inches away from each other. He takes her hand; an automatic gesture he’s made so many times, but when he does, she shifts her body closer and leans against him. The chains are uncomfortable between them, but he leans back against her anyway, any barriers meaningless at the moment. He smells her hair, hears her breathe. She sighs, and says simply: “Thank you, Mulder.”

And suddenly he knows.

There are some things in his life that are absolutely unexplainable: the various X-Files that cross his desk on a daily basis, the way Scully’s eyes change color when she’s thinking. The way she never seems to see the things he does. And in that very same way, Mulder sits next to his partner in a sandbox, holding her hand, and he knows. 

He’s in love with her. 

He loves her in the way he’s always tried to convince himself he doesn’t. He loves her in the way that makes him want to protect her from any and all harm. He loves her in the way her big brother would murder him in his sleep over.

And now that he knows for sure, he also knows for sure that he’s fucked.

He should have told her the moment her eyes opened in the hospital. He should have told her that night she held him in her arms in the woods and promised she was never, ever going to tire of him. He should have told her then. Because now he can’t. Now her walls have gone back up. Now, everything is awful, and here they sit in this box of sand like two ships passing each other in the night, and he cannot tell her how he feels. He simply cannot.

He’d told her before they have communication unspoken, but if they truly did, perhaps they could get their timing right.

_If you spare my sister this and this alone, I can live with that._

He doesn’t owe Bill Jr. anything, and he knows this. But the man’s words haunt him. Sparing Scully from himself is something he can do. Maybe loving her from afar is all he really has to give.

“What can I do, Scully?” he asks. He wants to love her in any way he can. He wants her to let him. “Anything.”

_If I can love you, let me._

He sees her face in his memory laying against her hospital pillow, the corners of her mouth turned down, a pale expression of anguish. Of fear. Her desperation to save him her final act of life. 

She takes a deep breath. “Anything?”

“Yeah, anything.” It’s the very least he can do.

She pauses, and his mind goes wild considering the wide gamut of favors she could cash in at this moment. Which makes it all the more surprising when she tells him what she wants.

“Sing to me, Mulder,” she says. 

He’s completely taken off guard. “What?”

“I want you to sing.”

He chuckles, putting his arm around her. Their hands are still clasped together. “Okay, but this is the favor, right? I’m off the hook after this?”

She smiles; he can feel her smiling against him and he relishes it. “For now.”

He thinks, wonders what to sing. The swings creak, and the sun appears to be attempting to break through the gray clouds above them. Right now, this is what she wants. This, he can do for her. So he sings the only song he can think of.

_“Joy to the world… all the boys and girls…”_

She laughs softly, squeezes his jacket a bit. 

_“...If I were the king of the world, tell you what I'd do..._ _I'd throw away the cars and the bars and the war and make sweet love to you...”_

He reaches the portion of the song that makes him more uncomfortable now than he probably would have been a short while ago, and pauses. The old Mulder, the one of two minutes ago, might make a joke, or annoy her with his innuendos. But he’s been stunned into silence by his recent revelation. 

He lets the silence grow like a balloon, filling in every space between him and Scully and the swing set and the sand and the clouds above them until it’s absolutely unbearable.

“Is that all I get?” she asks.

“Er, sorry,” he says. “I got… distracted.”

“I’ll bet.” She doesn’t let go of him. “Do some Elvis.”

He clears his throat. “Any requests?”

 _“It’s Now or Never,”_ she instantly says. He isn’t sure if he’s imagining it, but he swears he can feel her squeeze his hand tighter. 

As he sings the lyrics, he wonders if she picked this one for a reason, if this song has meaning for her. If it makes her think of the two of them. Because as the words tumble off his lips, he really hears them for the first time.

 _“Tomorrow will be too late..._ _It’s now or never, my love won’t wait.”_

He sings the entire song, because she never asks him to stop. And he doesn’t stop, because just like her, he’s never going to get tired. 

The wine and cheese party, the flirting in the woods. He’d missed it then, and never has it felt so obvious as it does now. But his heart constricts, because with this song request it feels like she’s giving him one last chance, pitching him underhand right over the plate, and he has no choice but to intentionally strike out. 

_Swing and a miss._ She deserves so much better than him. 

When he finishes the song, he hears her sigh contentedly, and is happy for the moment that he’s made her feel a little bit better. The swings creak as the sky opens above them, its warmth spilling over them. He feels the shift in Scully’s demeanor he’s been waiting days for, and for that he’s infinitely grateful.

“We should probably get back home,” she says. 

Mulder doesn’t want to go, he doesn’t want to leave this spot, but he nods. “Okay.”

She’s probably right. She has a family that worries for her, that’s waiting for her. And a guy they approve of waiting in the kitchen who can probably give her all of the things he can’t.

“I forgot to mention... Detective Kresge is at your house. Back on his feet,” Mulder says, curious to see her reaction. Eager to gauge her interest.

“Oh?” she asks. “Was there a development in the case?”

Mulder shakes his head deliberately, and raises an eyebrow. “No.”

She seems to take his meaning, but as she looks into his eyes he isn’t sure what to think. 

“He just... came to see me?” she asks, curious.

“A suitor come to call,” he jokes. And he sees it then, on her face, a brief moment of hope, perhaps for a chance at normalcy. It breaks his heart into pieces.

He releases her hand, wraps his fingers around the metal chains. Once again there is a barrier between them. He watches her expression betray a thousand emotions, none of which he’s prepared to decipher. Then, she looks away from him.

“It would never work,” she says with a secret smile, looking back at the sand. She makes an “X” this time. “I’m an east coast girl.”

He grins, unearned relief spreading throughout him. “That hairline, too,” he adds, unable to help himself. “I have a feeling he’s not gonna get seventy years, Scully.” He taps his temple. “Something to think about.”

She laughs then, the first real laugh he’s heard from her in days. It’s something; it’s enough to make him feel like he’s won the day.

“You know,” she says as she stands, “before I joined the FBI, Melissa told me to remember the things that were important. The people I was going to meet along the way. How my life would change.”

Mulder nods, and she moves to stand in front of him. She then looks at him, really looks into his eyes, and he knows she’s doing her best to communicate.

“I want you to know you’ve changed my life, Mulder,” she says softly. “And I mean… in all the good ways.” 

Her words fill his heart, picking up the previously shattered pieces and putting them back together. 

As he reaches out to take her hand again, he remembers once more how it felt when she was close to death and he was never really sure which touch might be their last. Her fingers close around his own and he only feels warmth and life. For just a moment, there is a tiny shred of hope. Because no matter what happens to them in the future, having her in his life makes his present infinitely better.

“You’ve changed my life too, Scully,” he says, and it feels so good to tell her something real, something true. Something they can both be ready for. “More than I think you’ll ever know.”

She gives him a smile, then releases his hand, bending over to pick up her shoes. Starts walking towards the edge of the sandbox. 

_It’s now or never._

She steps out with one foot, but before she can raise the other, he speaks one last time.

“Hey Scully.”

She turns. "Yeah?"

He takes a deep breath. “You can talk to me anytime, if you… ever want to.”

She looks at him, almost as if seeing him for the first time. “I can?”

He nods. “Yeah. Anytime.” 

She gives him a sad, inscrutable smile, and looks back down at the sand. She lifts her foot out, both feet on solid ground now.

She won’t, and they both know it.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
